Rover the Top wrote:It's not about statistics. Prior himself said earlier this year that Pietersen had been damaging the morale of the team and they would play better without him. First chance he's had to back that up, and he's played better than he'd done for some time. It's nothing conclusive, but good to see a more confident performance from England's top batsmen.

And in the next innings he could be out for 0. As I said, you can't read anything in to it. Pointless.

Lancs, having only picked up 11 batting points in their other games this season, declared at 650-6 in their current match. Ashwell Prince was 257 not out. They then bowled Northants out for 180 and have them following on at 70-3, some 400 runs behind with another day to go. If only we could play them every week...

England have a first innings lead of 239... Shane Warne was suggesting last night that they should bat again to give the bowlers a break. But with less than 6 full sessions remaining, they've got to bowl again, surely? Unless they really up the run-rate, India would have to bat for the best part of five of them to draw...

What were they doing last night? If they're so knackered that they couldn't bowl again this morning, is a break of just a few hours really going to make that much of a difference? I'd say they need to be back out before tea to give themselves the best chance of winning. Which means they need to score quickly, and with that comes a risk of being bowled out cheaply and letting India back into the match. First wicket gone as I type...

Or, rapidly adding another few hundred and leaving a huge total and having India back in at the end of the day with the chance of getting a few wickets during a tough couple of hours for the batsmen after you bowlers have relaxed all day as well as all night...

Either decision is justifiable. You just can't be proven wrong now so it's also pointless to argue about it.

mrblackbat wrote:The follow on should nearly always be taken as a matter of course, unless the wicket is absolutely falling apart. Which it isn't.

I wouldn't do it on the second day after you've just unexpectedly skittled a side. You've got to take into account that they're unlikely to collapse again and could possibly put themselves in a winning position if they bat for a couple of days. However, not to do it on the fourth day is unnecessarily negative. India would have been under immense pressure and our bowlers shouldn't be exhausted after 105 overs. Now we're in a silly situation where the lead is probably enough already, and we're just using up overs we could have in the bank to bowl them out with.